


Begging for Thread

by Gia279



Series: Practice Ficlets [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Ficlet, Home Videos, Human AU, M/M, Old Married Couple, One Shot, Reminiscing, destiny if you squint, wink wink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 08:36:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13700853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gia279/pseuds/Gia279
Summary: Stiles was wheezing on the couch. "You were so cute!! Oh my god."The TV was frozen on an image of Derek in his early teens and—dear god—braces, glaring at the camera. His hair was all spikes and gel.





	Begging for Thread

**Author's Note:**

> Here's another one! Still learning. This one is kinda awkward I think ?_? But I hope you enjoy it anyway.
> 
>  
> 
>  **Prompt:** “Derek and stiles are old and married and going through photo albums and home videos and in several of Derek’s pictures stiles is in the background (as kids both are unaware of each other) and in one of stiles videos Derek and his sisters walk behind him.” ehh...kinda?

"If you burn the popcorn again, I'm banning you from the microwave!" Stiles called. 

Derek grunted from the kitchen but otherwise didn't respond. He didn't burn the popcorn _that_ often. But just in case, he watched the timer extra closely. Stiles couldn't smell the litter box right under his nose, but the first whiff of burned popcorn set him complaining bitterly for days. 

"Oh my god!" Stiles shouted.

"Did you start it without me?!" Derek snatched the popcorn bag out of the microwave and shuffled to the living room.

Stiles was wheezing on the couch. "You were so cute!! Oh my god."

The TV was frozen on an image of Derek in his early teens and—dear god—braces, glaring at the camera. His hair was all spikes and gel. 

Derek groaned, covering his face. "I thought we were starting with yours!"

"No way, dude, Cora dropped these off freaking _giggling_. No way was I waiting on this."

Derek narrowed his eyes at him. "You got mean in your old age."

"Psh, I'm an angel. A wrinkly, gray angel." He ran a hand through his thinning, silver-shot hair and Derek's heart swelled with love.

"You're giving me heart burn," he complained, dropping the popcorn bag on Stiles's lap. "Fine. Which video is this?"

"The label on it just said 'summer before high school', so I'm guessing it's going to be amazing." Stiles kicked his legs up on Derek's lap and pressed play. 

The video brought back memories of that summer, the smell of lake water and grill smoke, the mild sunburn he sustained from staying out at the lake too long. 

Laura had been chasing him around with the camera, shouting at him to "Just smile for fuck's sake!", and in the background, Talia could be heard telling her to watch her fucking mouth. 

He closed his eyes when he heard his father laugh somewhere in the distance.

Stiles moved his legs. A second later, he'd wrapped his arms around Derek's waist and settled his head on his shoulder. He didn't say anything, kept his gaze on the TV where fourteen-year-old Derek was baring his teeth and braces at the camera in some approximation of a smile, but Derek understood anyway. 

He kissed the top of his head and smiled sadly. There were still plenty of videos to watch.

It was around the time Derek’s fourteen-year-old self was vindictively flicking pebbles at the camera Laura had left on the table that Stiles jumped. It was the hard sort of flinch that made Derek look down at him. “You okay?”

“I thought I just saw…” He leaned forward, snatching the remote up. “We are still watching your video, right?” he asked dazedly. “I didn’t drift off and let you change it, did I?”

“No…I’m still right there, um, ew, picking lettuce out of my braces.”

“Sexy, babe,” Stiles muttered, reaching back to pat his knee. He hit a button on the remote and rewound the video. He leaned even further forward, squinting hard. 

Derek grunted and shifted forward, pulling Stiles’s glasses off his shirt collar and dropping them on his face.

“Thanks.” 

“What’re you looking for?”

“I just…thought I saw…something.” He kept rewinding until it reached where Laura had been throwing bread crumbs at Derek to get his attention, then he paused it and started fiddling with the remote.

“What’d you see?” Derek asked, bored after a few minutes of this.

“Yeah, yeah, hang on.” He looked down at the remote, searching the buttons, and finally found what he was looking for after a second. The picture zoomed in.

“Oh, god, what, you want to see if you can spot the lettuce in my braces?” Derek scoffed. 

“No! Look,” Stiles gasped. He slid off the couch and onto his knees to lean against the coffee table, even closer to the TV screen. He was going to have trouble getting up later, and Derek was going to be the one dealing with him complaining about his knees. 

“What am I looking at?” Derek asked, not even looking at the screen. He was wondering if he could convince Stiles to scoot his ass back up on the couch.

“Look, look, look at the screen, you bat.” He zoomed in again, then started laughing a little. “Oh my god?” 

Derek finally looked at the screen. It was blurry, but in the distance, it definitely looked like… “Is that the sheriff?”

Stiles made a low wounded noise and Derek reached out automatically, clasping his shoulder. “Yeah, I think it is.” He let the video play a little, zoomed in.

Derek gasped next. “Is that—you?” 

It was, it had to be, a skinny ten-year-old running on the rough sand surrounding the lake at the sheriff’s side. His mouth was wide open in a laugh, and Derek could picture just the way his eyes lit up as he laughed like that. 

Derek’s gaze strayed to the corner of the screen, where his shoulder was just visible. “We never met, right? Before you were seventeen?”

Stiles shook his head vehemently. “No, I'm sure of it. Wow.” He looked at the pile of videos they still had to get through. “I mean, it’s not that surprising. We’re both Beacon Hills natives.”

“You want to see if we crossed paths in the rest of the videos, don't you?”

“Yes!” 

They switched to one of Stiles’s videos, one from when he was about thirteen or fourteen. It was just him and Scott goofing around outside of a mall, trying to use skateboards they clearly had no idea how to ride. 

Derek cleared his throat. His memory was blurry at best, but he could recall, distantly, coming home from college to visit and Laura dragging him to the mall. While they were there, they witnessed…

On screen, Stiles let out a high pitched squeal and careened down the parking lot on the skateboard, on his back. 

Derek saw himself a second later as Scott abandoned the camera on a bench to chase Stiles. He and Laura were standing near the doors of the mall, laughing so hard they had to hold each other up. Cora was standing behind them trying to see. 

Derek looked like he usually did in any pictures after high school: leather jacket, jeans that were honestly just too tight, and perma-stubble. “Jokes on you,” he said to his eighteen year old self. “You marry the goofball.” 

Stiles laughed helplessly. “How did we not know this before?”

Derek leaned forward and kissed behind his ear. “We weren't supposed to meet until a few years later.”

“Sap,” he teased. 

“Sure,” he agreed easily. “I’m the sap. But I know you're the one who’s going to spend the rest of the day going through all these vidoes to see where else we might have met.”

Stiles sighed. “What else is retirement for?” He groaned as he tried to get back on the couch. 

Derek, shaking his head, reached out to pull him into his lap. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.” Stiles tucked his head under Derek’s chin and sighed.


End file.
